


Big Textbook

by prettyfaroutman



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Dancing, M/M, Pining, Pre-Slash, jack is such a dork, shameless flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 23:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5394620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyfaroutman/pseuds/prettyfaroutman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy Swawesome Santa, pitterpatter! My prompt was "you suck at dancing but you’re doing it in the middle of a bookstore to the crappy music on the radio and I think it’s pretty damn cute" - I hope the cuteness herein is satisfactory <3</p><p>Many thanks to ofnovemberfiction and cutecbuttons for the betas - y'all are swawesome!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Big Textbook

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pitterpatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitterpatter/gifts).



Despite Bitty's intentions to start the semester off on a good academic footing, he had already begun to get distracted during the first lecture session of his Psychology, Biology, and Politics of Food class. Though to be fair, he didn't exactly have a lot of encouragement from his fellow teammates in the class to pay attention. The group text was blowing up with Holster complaining about the professor wasting time going over the syllabus when they could just as easily read it on their own later, and with Chowder asking how cool it was to be “in a class with, like, half the team?!” Bitty sat next to Lardo, and she and Shitty were passing a paper back and forth with increasingly ridiculous caricature sketches of the other people in the class. At the end of the row, Jack looked as though he was the only one actually paying attention, though Bitty wouldn’t have admitted to anyone that he was at all aware of whether or not Jack was paying attention.

Bitty was practically dying to make a pie by the time class ended. He hadn’t yet recovered from the temperature shock after spending a couple weeks back in Madison, so a warm oven and the promise of baked goods was everything he wanted. He linked arms with Lardo, and the two of them and Shitty booked their way across the quad, while Jack, Holster, and Nursey lingered a bit behind them.

As soon as they stepped inside, Bitty set his bookbag on a chair, put on his apron, preheated the oven, and pulled out his butter and flour. Lardo sat at the kitchen table, a notebook open in front of her, to keep Bitty company, and before long Shitty rejoined them. He had stripped down to his Ms. Pac-Man boxers, and plopped down at the table with his laptop.

“Getting to work already, Shits?” Lardo asked. “I’m impressed.”

“Nah, bro,” he replied, chuckling. “Who the fuck do you think I am?”

“Just some pre-law d-bag.” She reached over to ruffle his hair.

“Fair enough.”

“So what are you actually doing, Shitty?” Bitty asked.

“Getting my textbooks, brah.”

“Sounds a lot like work to me,” Lardo chirped.

“Weren’t you paying attention when Prof. Atley reviewed the syllabus?” Jack’s voice chimed in as the front door closed and he stepped into the kitchen doorway. Bitty glanced over his shoulder to see Jack — a few locks of hair sticking out from under his beanie, jacket unzipped, cheeks bright pink from the cold — and felt a flush creeping up his neck. He quickly turned back to his pie crust, leaning into the rolling pin just a little harder.

“Got it right here,” Shitty said. Bitty could hear the crinkle of paper as Shitty waved it around.

“So you know that textbook is out of print, which means we have to get a used copy at the Samwell Bookstore?”

“Jack, Jack, Jack, my fine-assed luddite Adonis. Haven’t you ever heard of file torrents?”

“No. Is that a bookstore?”

Bitty couldn’t help it — he giggled at Jack’s ignorance. He hadn’t intended to draw Jack’s attention, but of course he wasn’t that lucky.

“Something funny over there, Bittle? I hadn’t realized your pies were so amusing.”

Bitty cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders, keeping his eyes on the crust. “I’ll have you know my pies have hidden depths.”

“Really? Maybe you should take them on the road. Explore their comedic potential, eh?”

Bitty finally turned around, rolling pin in hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Zimmermann, but I believe we were chirping _you_?”

“Seriously, bro,” Lardo said. “How have you survived college without torrenting?”

“Just fine.”

“Says you,” Shitty scoffed. “I don’t even want to know how much cash you’ve wasted on Big Textbook in your four years here.”

“Big Textbook...?”

“Whatever. Point is, I’m getting shit done. I’m striking a blow against those greedy fuckers.”

Jack cocked his head. “So what you’re saying is, you’re stealing.”

Shitty and Lardo both turned to stare at Jack. Bitty looked apprehensively between them, hoping that he wasn’t witnessing the beginnings of an actual fight.

After a long moment, though, Lardo and Shitty began to crack up, and Bitty sighed in relief.

“Zimmermann,” Shitty said, trying to catch his breath, “I love you like a brother who stole all the beautiful genes for himself, but you’re a goddamn square. Fifty fuckin’ years old if you’re a day.”

“Anti-piracy rhetoric is so early-2000s,” Lardo added, between chuckles.

Bitty himself didn’t feel very strongly either way on the issue, but something about Jack taking a moral stance on something was so admirable to him, he couldn’t let it slide. “Hey y’all, don’t chirp Jack just because he wants to do the right thing. I think it’s noble.”

“Thank you.” Jack nodded and smiled at Bitty, who smiled back briefly before turning back to his pie to hide his pleased blush.

“Fine, boys, have it your way,” Shitty said. “Go spend hundreds of dollars at the bookstore while I spend twenty minutes downloading this shit for free.”

“Email me the PDF?” Lardo asked.

“Natch.”

“Well, I’m going to head to the bookstore. Want to join me, Bittle?”

“Oh! Um…” Bitty hesitated. He hoped Shitty had exaggerated the price; if the textbook really was hundreds of dollars, he would rather download it for free too. But he could hardly say that after he’d just taken Jack’s side. “Sure, Jack! Let me just…” he gestured helplessly at the pie on the counter.

“Fine. I’ll come back down for you in ten minutes.”

Between Bitty’s pie prep, bundling up to go back outside, and Shitty hug-tackling Jack until Jack got him in a headlock, Bitty and Jack didn’t leave for another half hour. If they’d been in a hurry, the walk to the bookstore would only have taken five minutes, but Jack ambled as if he didn’t care how long it took them to get there. Bitty savored the time alone with Jack, even if the cold made the tip of his nose go numb. He let his mind wander to Jack’s cheekbones, which he could just glimpse out of the corner of his eye.

“Earth to Bittle!”

“What?” He shook his head. “Oh, sorry, I was just... mind, wandering.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Jack chuckled.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if you had any other textbooks you need to buy while we’re there.”

“Oh! Well, yes? But I don’t have my other syllabi with me. Besides, if this book is really expensive like Shitty said, I should…” He didn’t want to say _download the others for free_ , for obvious reasons, so he hedged a bit. “I should, um, buy the rest of them from half.com or something, where they’ll be cheaper. How ‘bout you — do you have others you need to buy?”

“Yeah, I have a couple for my senior seminar and one for photography. But you know, if you’re worried about the money, you could always just share my copy.”

“Are you sure? Do you want to split it or something?”

“Bittle, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Besides, I know for a fact that you spend more than your fair share feeding everyone in the Haus.”

“Well, okay, if you’re sure…”

When they got to the bookstore, Jack knew exactly where to go to find the food science section, so Bitty followed him. The stack of used textbooks lay on a low shelf, and Jack picked up the top copy from the pile and immediately continued walking further down the aisle.

“Jack! You can’t get that one!”

Jack turned around. “Why not?”

“Look how tattered the edges are! For as much money as you’re paying for this book, at least make sure that you get the nicest one.”

“Does it matter? It’s all the same text.”

“Of course it matters, Jack Zimmermann!”

“Bittle, I’m not going to spend the time to look through all these copies just to find the one that is slightly prettier. That would take ages.”

Bitty groaned. “Fine! Go get your other books and _I’ll_ find the best one.”

Jack wandered off while Bitty lost himself paging through the books, hemming and hawing over which copy was the least obnoxiously weathered and highlighted. Something caught his ear which made him perk up, however — a languid sweep of strings and a sleepily rich voice.

“ _Georgia... Georgia... the whole day through..._ ”

It was a song Bitty recognized from his childhood. His MooMaw loved the old crooners, and she still had a turntable and all her old LPs, so she would put on her albums while she and Bitty baked together. Outside of that warm association, though, it wasn’t the kind of music that Bitty would actually choose to listen to; it was far too melancholy for his taste.

He knew someone besides his MooMaw who would choose to listen to it, though, because that someone lived across the hall and didn’t seem to care about inflicting his terrible taste on the rest of the Haus. For as often as Jack chirped Bitty about liking “bubblegum pop” (as if Jack even knew what that meant), Bitty could hardly resist an opportunity to draw attention to Jack’s questionable taste. He looked up to find Jack, ready to chirp him senseless, and saw something surprising at the far end of the aisle.

Jack was dancing.

Or, well, he was swaying gently to the beat. Bitty didn’t even realize it was possible to dance to a song as slow as this — or at least not possible for someone under 75 with no partner. But Jack was nothing if not a 75-year-old man trapped in the body of a 25-year-old hockey god. Bitty giggled, imagining Jack in a WWII-era army uniform at a Knights of Columbus mixer with blue-haired women swooning at his every move.

Of course, Jack didn’t need a uniform to induce fits of swooning. Even under the best of circumstances, there was only one place Bitty could look when Jack faced away from him — the Zimmermann Ass was legendary, and Bitty was only human, after all — but each time Jack shifted his weight, his ass punctuated the motion as only a well-toned hockey butt can. And as hilarious as it was to imagine Jack in a WWII uniform, Bitty couldn’t deny that there was one part of the uniform in particular that stood out in his imagination.

Bitty felt a hot flush on his cheeks and took a step back, stumbling into a student who had appeared behind him as if from nowhere. He caught his balance and muttered a flustered, “Goodness, excuse me!” The sudden interruption of his fantasy pushed all thoughts of chirping out of his mind. He tried to refocus on finding a copy of the textbook, but his eyes kept returning to the seat of Jack’s jeans without permission from his brain. Biting his lip, he scolded himself and waited out the end of the song.

As the song faded out and Jack settled his weight to his left side, Bitty took one last peek before returning his thoughts to safer territory and his gaze to something closer to locker room etiquette. He set down the textbook he’d been holding and leaned over to pull another copy out from underneath the pile.

An unmistakeable guitar riff broke through the void left by Ray Charles, and Bitty smirked. It seemed as though someone who worked at the bookstore also tuned in to the WJLZ Oldies wavelength. Of course, the Rolling Stones were a little newer than Ray Charles — his parents’ era rather than his MooMaw’s — but nonetheless Jack was probably the only current college student he knew who would choose to listen to them.

He continued paging through textbooks until he’d narrowed it down to the two least objectionable copies. He’d just about decided when Jack’s voice, a little too close to his ear for comfort, startled him.

“You’re not committing to spending your life with this book, Bittle. Just pick one.”

Bitty turned and thwapped Jack’s arm with the book. “Oh, hush, Mr. Zimmermann! I’ll take as long as I want, thank you very much.” He picked up another copy off the pile, just to spite Jack.

“Fine,” Jack said, cracking half a smile. He gestured with the pile of books he’d accumulated while Bitty had been trying to ignore him. “I’ll be in line, whenever you’re done.”

He sauntered off toward the front of the store while Bitty tried to occupy himself long enough to make it seem as though he wasn’t at the mercy of Jack’s beck and call. He had to admit to himself he kind of was, though, so after only a minute he followed Jack toward the registers.

Once again Jack was dancing. But where earlier he’d merely been swaying vaguely, now his whole body was involved. His knees bent, mostly in rhythm with the chugging beat, and he bobbed his head enough that his bangs, still messy from where he’d pulled off his beanie, kept falling in his eyes. Bitty smiled fondly and shook his head.

After a moment, though, he noticed that Jack was mouthing along with the words and he quickly stopped smiling: “ _Gimme, gimme shelter… or I’m gonna fade away…_ ”

Bitty’s heart clenched. Carefree, stereotypical college days like today, when he and Jack could hang out like two normal people with no larger worries than whether Ransom and Holster had stolen the cookies he baked for the frogs, often made Bitty forget the larger context of Jack’s years at Samwell. But every once in a while the full weight of it all — the Zimmermann legacy, Jack’s overdose, his impending graduation and NHL prospects — would hit Bitty unexpectedly, and those lyrics of Jack’s silly old-man song struck that chord.

By the blithe look on Jack’s face, it didn’t seem as though the song had conjured the same feelings for him as it had for Bitty. But Bitty could easily imagine the pained but stoic expression Jack got whenever a game didn’t go the way he wanted it to, not to mention the horrible panicked look on his face after EpiKegster that had haunted Bitty’s thoughts throughout winter break. 

Bitty longed to provide some sort of shelter for Jack, some insulation against the harshest judgments of the world and his own impossibly high standards for himself. He never even dared to hope that he could fill the role he really wanted to in Jack’s life, but at least he could be a good friend. And if friendship was all Jack would ever accept from him, then friendship was what Bitty would offer him.

Friendship and pies, obviously.

He sneaked up behind Jack’s shoulder and poked him. “Hey.”

Jack turned and pulled a wry smile. “Tore yourself away from the stacks, eh? Finally found The One?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Bitty said with a satisfied smile. “The best one of all.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.”

“Why are you in such a hurry, anyway? Do you have an appointment with the Netflix documentaries page?”

“Very funny, Bittle. I was actually thinking we could… y’know, stop and grab some coffee at Annie’s.” He cleared his throat, then put on his chirping face again. “I know they don’t have your pumpkin-peppermint-whatever monstrosities now that the holidays are over, but I bet you can find something just as bad for you if you look really hard.”

Bitty smiled, ignoring the chirp. “Sounds good, Jack. Do you want to stop by the Haus and drop the books off first?”

“Bittle, if you can’t carry one textbook to the coffee shop, I’m going to have to recommend an increase in your strength training regimen to Coach Hall.”

Bitty rolled his eyes. “I was just asking, but fine, _Captain_.”

“Good.”

The chill wind of the late afternoon bit into Bitty’s cheeks as they walked back across campus, so when they arrived at the coffee shop the blast of warm air was a relief. “Elastic Heart” played over the speakers, and he began to bob up and down, half dancing, half warming himself up.

“Nice dancing, Bittle. Is this Taylor Swift?”

Bitty shook his head and laughed. _This boy_.

 


End file.
